


Of Lost Things

by IShipThem



Series: We'll Never Speak of This [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 08:38:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2222604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IShipThem/pseuds/IShipThem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“'What happened?' he insisted, more forcefully once Gansey breathed a whole lot more and said nothing else.</p><p>'Ronan—' Gansey began, then stopped as if he’d chocked. This was just as well, cause Adam’s blood had rushed to his ears, a wave breaking with a great whooshing sound. He wouldn’t have listened to whatever was supposed to follow it."</p><p>Or</p><p>Ronan's "suicide attempt", through Adam's POV</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Lost Things

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning: discussion of a perceived suicide attempt and parental abuse.

 

The ringing of the telephone nearly killed Adam in three distinct manners.

First of all, there was nothing quite as heart attack inducing as a phone wrenching you from sound sleep; especially at the wee hours of morning. Being jerked awake by a shrill, loud burst of screeching almost tore Adam’s heart right out of his chest. His eyes snapped open before his brain was awake, leaving him blinking like a drugged owl for long, dreadful seconds, wondering what the hell was this foreboding feeling in his guts.

That was the thing about phones during the night. The sudden jolt back into reality was disconcerting enough. But the grim promise of bad news was worse.

And all of that was nothing compared to the immediate and overpowering _panic_ that slammed him right on the heels of consciousness.

“ _Fuck,”_ he hissed, stumbling out of bed with all the grace of a drunken moose. The telephone was still shrieking in the living room, and Adam tore his way to it, yanking it off the base and almost off the wall. “ _Shit.”_

He rubbed his face heavily, nerves still resonating, and collapsed on the couch. A quick inventory: the door to his parent’s bedroom was still closed, his brain was more or less catching up to his body, and everything was back to blissful silence.

There was no shuffling of a man getting out of bed; no loud complaining about the fucking hour; no promises of murder or payback. Adam sagged on the cushions in an exhausted adrenaline hangover. His relief was so thick he could almost taste it.

Maybe that was overreacting, but if so, he blamed it on survival instincts.

A faint murmur reached Adam’s ears, and it took him a moment to realize it came from the phone. The person at the other end was probably talking to him right this instant.

He glared at the thing, tempted to just hang it up, but what if they called again? One heart attack, he reasoned, was enough for a night. Casting a careful, wary look at his father’s door, Adam fitted the telephone between his ear and shoulder. “Hello?” he called, voice scrapping and struggling on the way out of his throat.

 _“Adam?”_ Gansey’s voice replied, and he frowned, harshly pushing his hair out of his eyes.

Something was wrong.

“What happened?” he asked, lowering his voice and squaring his shoulders. It was Gansey’s breathing that gave it away: sharp and quick like he’d just nearly drowned and couldn’t seem to fill his lungs again.

He wasn’t exactly wheezing, but he wasn’t merely painting either. Gasping, Adam decided. Gansey was gasping instead of breathing. This couldn’t be good.

“What _happened?”_ he insisted, more forcefully once Gansey breathed a whole lot more and said nothing else.

“Ronan—” Gansey began, then stopped as if he’d chocked. This was just as well, cause Adam’s blood had rushed to his ears, a wave breaking with a great whooshing sound. He wouldn’t have listened to whenever was supposed to follow it.

It lasted for a mere second, but it matched the pause in Gansey’s word, fitting just nicely enough that Adam didn’t miss what was said next.

“Noah found him,” Gansey started at last, which was no answer at all and answer enough at the same time. “We’re going— I mean we just got. We just got to the hospital.”

Heat was slowly leaking out of Adam’s body, word by word, drop by drop, and pooling at his feet in a dark shade of red. The feeling at his fingertips was the first thing to go, his grip on the phone going slippery and clammy from cold sweat. His heart was eerily, frighteningly calm – a steady beat. Not in any hurry to bleed him out.

His thoughts were much more hectic, but even that was just background noise. Words were bouncing inside his skull like rubber bullets, yet finding the right ones was no trouble at all. They formed themselves in his lips helpfully, almost eagerly, and left his mouth in a calm, orderly manner.

“Is he conscious?” he asked, only then realizing those were _not_ the right words, not what he’d meant to ask. Adam’s hands were freezing, so cold that by all means they should’ve been purple. He needed to ask. Was Ronan—

“I don’t know,” Gansey replied, which was. Good. _Don’t know_ wasn’t _no_ , and _not no_ was distant enough from _dead_. Distant enough that the pool’s growth slowed down noticeably.

What next?

His arms were cold.

“Which hospital?” he asked, which was once more not exactly what he’d meant to say. Now he could hear noise behind Gansey’s gasping. Nurse shoes squeaking and doctors names coming through intercoms.

Gansey told him, and Adam found that in that short space of time, he’d lost the ability to catch the ricocheting words. Too many of them. They wouldn’t line up properly anymore, and finding the ones he wanted became more and more like trying to catch a chicken.

The frost was spreading to his lungs.

What next, _what next?_

“Why did you call me?” he asked, a bubble of clarity bursting through the ice. If they were already at the hospital, there was nothing that needed to be done. It didn’t occur to either boy how uncaring that sounded.

Gansey was too busy trying to breath, and Adam was too busy—

_Drip, drip, drip_

“I—” Gansey’s pause didn’t sound like he’d lost his words. It sounded more like he didn’t really want to say the words he’d found. “I can’t find Noah.”

If Adam had had perfect usage of his vocabulary right now, he could’ve thought “So what?” or maybe “And what does it have to do with me?” or even “What was the last time you saw him?”

But as it was, words were still too far out of his reach, so he had to settle for merely understanding what Gansey meant.

And what next?

Adam wondered why his heart wasn’t stampeding, or why his breath hadn’t picked up like Gansey’s. That was the expected reaction, right? That’s how panic worked. Where was the adrenaline? Where was the frenzy and the desperation and the urge? Where was that discharge of nervous energy that carried people through emergencies?

Why wasn’t he panicking?

The cold reached his spine, and Adam shivered, a motion that scattered frost all over the couch. This wasn’t panic. He wasn’t sure what it was.

“I’m coming right up,” Adam said in the phone, not waiting for Gansey’s answer.

Once he was moving, the ice in his bones became even more evident – everything he touched felt scalding under his frigid fingers. Adam would’ve bundled up as if he’d been going to face a blizzard, if he hadn’t been in such a hurry. Moving at all was hard enough already.

So instead, he followed the motions one by one, keeping his focus narrowed. The bare minimum required to leave home: that would do.

Shrugging on a pair of pants. (Not thinking about Ronan)

Getting his shoes. (Not thinking about Gansey)

Grabbing his wallet. (Not worrying about the slurping sound of his own heart)

And finally, the keys. (Not worrying about why he wasn’t panicking)

Tiptoeing came easily to him, a practiced motion no different than that right way of shoving the front door to get it open. His body barely registered it. Adam fitted the keys in the lock holding them tight enough that they dug in his skin – that kept them from tinkling. He walked out in the night air. His mind switched gears and stepped forward towards the next task; getting to the bike.

Someone snatched his sleeve with a fist.

The motion pulled his collar so that it fit around his neck and _strangled._ Adam gasped and jerked back, whirling around to avoid choking.

“And where exactly,” his father growled right in his face, “do you think you’re going?”

His ears began ringing.

 

* * *

 

His wrist was throbbing.

And also rapidly going purple.

But that was easily solved with a long-sleeved shirt, and Adam had bigger problems. His window was locked, and so was his door; he was effectively under house arrest, and it would be over three hours before his father got up again.

He was still freezing.

No access to the telephone meant Adam had no means to warn Gansey he wouldn’t be “right up” after all. But he tried not to worry, once it was just as likely Gansey would guess on what had happened. That the truth of it was bitter didn’t make it any less true.

He would be useless for the next three hours, so Adam should get to sleep.

What he actually did was fruitlessly try to get warm. And simmer.

The words bouncing about in his brain began hitting his skull at suicidal speed, fast enough to leave dents in the bone. Soon enough, they were blurring together, losing their definition and their edges. And right after, they turned into images.

Adam knew just enough that they were comprehensible, yet still maddeningly vague. Ronan had probably been passed out – but from what? Blood loss? Head injury? Sugar low? And Noah had found him, but found him _where?_ How long had Gansey been in that hospital before he’d decided to call?

(This was stupid, it wasn’t like Adam didn’t _know)_

(But he _didn’t_ know – he only knew Gansey was gasping and Noah couldn’t be found, and Ronan was, possibly, conscious or unconscious, but no news were good news, and that had to be enough)

The cold moved to the pit of his stomach and sat there like a dragon hoarding its lot. _Hypothermia,_ Adam firmly thought, plopping the word sleazily in his tongue. _Shock. Night chill. Sickness._

Plop, plop, plop they went, each word heavier and muddier and feebler. The cold unfurled in his guts, sinking claws in his organs and crackling disapprovingly. It was laughing at him. Adam could almost smell ice water as it reached up to whisper in his ear, oily and malicious and delightfully amused.

_Fear._

 

* * *

 

Breakfast was the worst meal of the day.

Lunch and dinner could be avoided to a certain degree, as long as Adam kept careful track of his excuses. But breakfast was inexorable, and his father was in a terrible mood.

That would’ve been bad enough by itself in a regular day. A day in which Adam had been more apt to read Robert Parrish and to play along. But today, placating his father seemed to be the very last thing he was able to do. The gears in his brain had frozen over and every little interaction with him was like trying to break through a thick layer of ice with a toothpick.

His wrist was still sore, and that didn’t help.

His wrist wasn’t the only thing that was sore.

His mother could feel the tension from miles away, and Adam could distantly notice her playing peacemaker. His nerves twitched angrily, hot anger threatening to rise up, but it didn’t expand the way it usually did. It was almost too easy to keep it down.

The clock kept ticking, but Adam was really waiting for his father to leave.

He watched with bared breath as he moved about, picking up his things with as much noise and complain as he could muster. His mother hovered by the kitchen door, anxiously, but Adam couldn’t move from his place at the table. The beat of his heart had slowed down so much it was echoing on his empty chest.

The front door clicked shut and Adam began counting his breaths.

Thirty-seven breaths were the minimum security requirement – then he could run.

And running was, considering his stiff, gelid muscles, surprisingly easy. So easy, in fact, that Adam could barely remember going from the kitchen to his bicycle. Within minutes, his legs had gone from unfeeling to burning with strain. Nothing to see here. Nothing unusual. Just another sleepless night running into a late morning and now he had to put his back on it to get to school in time.

Except school was right. And he turned left.

The bicycle hit the rack a couple miles per hour too fast, clumsily catapulting Adam out of it, but he caught the momentum and landed on his feet. The world seemed to have entered a new Ice Age on the run to the hospital. He couldn’t understand why no one else felt it.

The receptionist surely didn’t seem to be feeling it, and she looked up at his approach with professional ease. Nothing in her face hinted she was seeing frost clinging to Adam’s shoulders. But Adam could feel each individual flake.

The words in his mind pierced painfully through his lips. “Ronan Lynch?”

“Lynch,” the receptionist repeated neutrally. It sounded odd coming from her mouth, too indifferent, too harmless. “Let me see that.”

Adam watched as she clicked away on a keyboard, and wondered if he’d left a tray behind him on the spotless grey floor. He didn’t seem to have a drop of blood left.

The receptionist let out a little satisfied “oh”, only to have it die and frizzle behind her teeth. A sound Adam was disgustingly used to. It was the loud, awkward dying gasp of pity.

Adam’s ears began ringing again.

This was it – not a heart attack, not his father. This was what-- 

“He’s in room 301, sugar,” the receptionist informed, shutting down his thoughts. Adam thanked her – he thought – then took the stairs.

He saw Gansey first, although, for all intents, he should’ve seen Declan first. They were both talking in that hushed-yelling way people always adopted for arguments in funerals and parties. Declan was clearly wearing jeans on top of his pajama pants. He seemed just about to implode.

Matthew was sitting close by, eyes closed, not precisely asleep, but exhausted enough to mirror it. A nurse lifted her head when he walked in, from her perch on the nurse’s station. It faced off all the surrounding bedrooms, whose glass windows were deprived of curtains, all of them lit by a faint lamp without a switch.

Gansey… was still gasping.

Adam’s mind told him to walk up to them, but not even his eyes obeyed. They went around instead, window by window, hardly lingering. There was no need to linger; he’d spot it when he saw it.

_There he was._

Five steps was all it took to get him to the right door – Gansey, Declan and Matthew didn’t even see him, although the nurse did. She got halfway up from her chair, unsurely watching his progress. Adam vaguely wondered if she had a finger to the security button. If people usually made scenes in here.

The answers to these questions were, of course, _yes_ and _yes._ He didn’t really care.

The room was an odd thing, with its perpetually on little lamp and the streaks of sunlight daring it to be gloomy. Unnerving. The only shadows around were gray, artificial things created by curtains. Well, that last bit wasn’t quite true.

The shadow Adam had been looking for solidified before his eyes.

Ronan was lying on the single bed by the window, hospital blankets thrown over one leg. His other knee was pushed to his chest, shielding half of him from sight. Adam couldn’t see his face, as he was turned towards the window – or, better saying, turned away from Declan and Gansey.

There were white bandages wrapped all around his forearms and hands, all the way to his elbows. Adam knew, but he hadn’t _known._ Ronan’s sitting position should’ve been enough. If not him sitting, the nurse’s anxious reaction. Or Mathew’s dry cheeks. 

What really did it, however, was the IV.

It was dripping steadily, the needle disappearing in Ronan’s arm under a swab of cotton and medical tape. The sound of it was as clear as its sight. Adam could even read most of the label from where he stood at the door.

Dead people didn’t require IVs.

The ice cracked and came apart in great splashes, shedding out huge and heavy chunks on the floor around him. Adam hadn’t even noticed its weight until now. But he did notice, with blinding clarity, the heat rushing back into his cells.

His shoulder made a tiny bump sound when it hit the threshold, enough that Ronan’s muscles tensed. Adam didn’t say anything, waiting for sensation to settle back completely. He wondered if his lips were as blue as they felt.

There were a few moments of complete stillness, in which Ronan said or did absolutely nothing, and Adam breathed in slow intakes of warm, warm oxygen.

Finally, his friend snapped. And whirled around.

“What _is_ it, De—“

He bit back his words, so fast Adam was sure he tasted blood.

Ronan was pale. See-through pale, uncooked rice pale. The shadows under his eyes were so deep they looked like make up. His skin was undistinguishable from the hospital gown. Even breathing seemed to be a struggle, each intake and exhale audible as if Ronan’s diaphragm muscles were too exhausted to work his lungs.

Adam felt hot-blooded again.

He had no idea how long he’d been stared at Ronan while leaning on the doorway, or how long Ronan had been staring back at him. He looked baffled and perplexed, Adam’s apparition a sudden turn of events way too difficult to think about.

It was inevitable that it would make him angry. “ _What,_ Parrish?” he demanded, snappish, voice like sandpaper. “You lost something?”

Adam’s bones were sloppy, wisps of frozen cloth that had melted. He leaned more heavily on the wooden doorframe and delighted at the sound of his heart beating regularly. The warmth was so pleasant he’d gone a bit noodle-ish.

One last word ricocheting about in his skull bounced sloppily a few last times. In no hurry, it came to a lazy stop and rolled towards his lips, tasting like melting popsicles.

It could’ve come out breathy, or angry, or secretive. It could’ve conveyed a multitude of unspoken things Adam hadn’t yet unburied from his dusty recesses. It could, yet still, have been coated in just about any sort of sentiment he possessed.

Instead, it was all just very matter-of-factly.

“Almost,” he replied, in a low voice.

Ronan kept staring as if Adam had lost his damn mind. His eyelids weren’t staying properly open.

Then Adam’s words seemed to finally worm their way into his brain, and Ronan staggered. It would never have happened if he hadn’t been so past exhausted. But it happened, and Adam saw it.

“He’s awake now?”

Both of them snapped out of it and whirled around. Declan had walked up to Adam while they’d been distracted, and now stood just a step outside the room, looking fresh out of a hurricane.

 _You hadn’t noticed?_ Adam thought, sarcastically, but kept it to himself. The nurse was hovering even more anxiously now.

Ronan didn’t answer, not that Adam was expecting him to – even for Ronan, being angry and confused demanded energy. And there wasn’t nearly enough left.

“Define awake,” he told Declan, dryly.  There was no reply.

“Declan,” Gansey interjected, using the _voice._ “He’s just lost a lot of blood, I don’t think this is the best time…”

“Oh _, you_ don’t think, do you?” Declan growled back, and Adam shifted, rotating so that he was facing them instead of Ronan. “What do I—”

“ _We_ ,” Adam interrupted, enunciating the word loud and clear. “Are in a hospital.”

That shut them up pretty quickly, two sets of eyes glancing over at the nurse as one. Declan was so tense he seemed about to go super nova. Adam hoped he had some business to attend to sometime soon, because all of that had to explode – and it would be better it didn’t do so on top of Ronan. At least, not until he could blink without threatening to fall over each time.

Declan yanked his arm from Gansey’s grip – he hadn’t even noticed it happen – and stepped away from the door. “Go back to sleep,” he told Ronan over Adam’s shoulders, tersely. “We’ll—”

“We’ll talk later” was Adam’s best bet as to the end of that sentence, but Declan never actually finished it. Gansey maneuvered him back towards Mathew, and threw Adam _a look._ From him to Ronan, than back to him, clearly spelling it out.

This was going to be fun.

He watched Declan for a couple seconds more, wondering if, to Mathew at least, his worry was as plain as it was to Adam. He looked seasick.

Gansey was gasping, but Declan was chocking.

Then, deciding this wasn’t the most immediate problem, Adam turned back around and walked into the room. Ronan made a vague effort of following him with his eyes. Most of his energy seemed to be currently employed on being angry at Declan.

But even Ronan’s anger seemed only vague at this point. Adam realized, rather late by his own standards, that his friend was completely disoriented. Ronan probably didn’t even know what time it was. And he wasn’t going to ask.

Adam closed the door behind him, not that it made a lot of difference. “Why _aren’t_ you sleeping?” he asked, honestly surprised Ronan could stay upright, much less keep his eyes open.

His movements were odd, shattered into mismatched micro-motions. He was feeling pain. “Can’t,” he told Adam, so weary the word barely rose above a whisper.

Instead of replying, Adam walked over to the single guest chair by the bed and sat down. Wasn’t even the worst place he’d ever slept in. Ronan watched him with that exhausted mix of confusion and hostility.

“You’re just gonna sit there and stare at me?” he demanded, sharply. Adam bestowed him an unimpressed look.

“No,” he replied. “ _I_ am going to sleep.”

He wasn’t, not really, although the prospect did seem quite nice. Falling asleep felt a lot easier and closer to reach now that he wasn’t afraid of his toes gangrening. But Ronan didn’t call bullshit.

He was barely there, Adam thought. But what would you have expected?

As if doing it on purpose to prove him wrong, Ronan’s eyes travelled down from his face to his arms. Adam followed his line of sight and flinched when he realized his sleeves had ridden up, meaning Ronan could plainly see the purple-yellow-red-green bruise around his wrist. He made no comment.

Adam pulled his sleeves back down.

“Night,” he told Ronan firmly. Again, he was just met with silence.

But he kept listening after he’d closed his eyes and laid his head back. It was easy to, when everything was so sterilely quiet.

The ruffle of sheets, the moan of a bed frame, and then – steady breathing.

Adam pried one eye open. Ronan had his back to him, the IV cord stretched a little further to keep up, and the sheets pushed all the way to his neck. He’d gone back to sleep.

With any luck, he’d be out until lunchtime. And Adam was missing school by being here.

He considered this, only for long enough to feel a wisp of cold ice insinuating itself back into his body. No, he decided, setting back to watch Ronan’s breathing. He could hang around for a little bit longer.

Just a little bit longer.


End file.
